Nuclear energy can charge your automobile's battery or produce the hydrogen for its fuel cells. And all that without creating any greenhouse gases. Nuclear waste can be refined and reused. It can be transported and stored safely. Power Plants can be designed safely even to point of containing the worst scenario--a meltdown.

It is the perfect solution for a clean environment. It's stupid to succumb to hysterical nonsensical fears over nuclear power.

For JRH, technology is static...everything regarding nuclear power should be equated to Chernobyl. Nuclear Power Plants just can't be built any better than with old Soviet technology-- end of discussion.

Yes. The 1980s were like, so long ago. Technology is like, warp-years ahead of where it was then. There weren't any flying cars back then! People didn't live on Mars back then! Cars ran on gasoline back then! That's like pre-history, dude!

Anyway, the meltdown at Chernobyl could have been avoided according to the a government report that said, "...operators removed at least 204 control rods from the reactor core (out of a total of 211 for this reactor model), leaving seven. The same guidelines prohibit operation of the RBMK-1000 with fewer than 15 rods inside the core zone."

Chernobyl did not melt down: it burned up. It had no containment vessel of any kind. At the very beginning of the reactor era, Nichols flatly rejected any graphite moderated design – even with containment. Graphite moderated reactors are ALWAYS vulnerable to run-away power generation.

And who is Nichols? He ran Oak Ridge and transitioned to VP for Westinghouse. He’s the originator/super-salesman of the pressurized light-water reactor. He chose it precisely because run-away power excursions are self-terminating due to physical laws.

Meltdowns in a light-water reactor only occur because of coolant failure.

It took great effort but the Swedes finally discovered how Chernobyl really occurred. The chief plant operator was playing with the control rods to ‘pulse’ the reactor – much in the manner of a kid revving his motorcycle out of gear. That’s right, he was screwing around even while the reactor was at an extremely reduced level of coolant due to engineering tests. That was HIS DEATHBED ADMISSION. He died horribly that very day. View the movie K-19 to imagine what that was like.

When any poster makes any analogy from Chernobyl to light-water reactor designs you can know that he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about. He’s gone religious. His opinions are based on faith, not fact, and he’s not about to let it go.

"RBMK is an acronym for the Russian reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalniy which means "reactor (of) large power (of the) channel (type)", and describes a now obsolete class of nuclear power reactor which was built only in the Soviet Union." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

"... such as at Chernobyl, which was a RBMK reactor." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#Design

"Since the Chernobyl accident, remaining RBMKs have been operated with a reduced number of fuel elements containing more highly enriched fuel, enabling them to operate relatively safely but defeating the original concept. Control systems have also been improved, in particular to eliminate the graphite tips on the control rods which produced an immediate increase in power when the rods were first inserted. This design feature is blamed for triggering the first actual explosion when the emergency shutdown button was pressed in an attempt to shut down the already out of control reactor during the Chernobyl disaster." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#Improvements_since_the_Chernobyl_accident